Love of Lights

Okay, I admit, yesterday I was initiated into an already not-so-exclusive club. One that has been around for millennia, one that you'd expect me to have joined at the age of 12 like the rest of the first world's teenagers, but no. I only experienced it yesterday. I got drunk. Well, maybe not drunk , I don't know; I think 'very tipsy' would be the better terminology. I didn't puke and I felt good the next morning and remembered the night with clarity, but I most certainly was not of regular mind last night. I had an array of alcohol and the result, I must confess, was fantastic. The edges of your eyes begin to haze and the world develops this dream-like quality. Things slow down -- not immensely, but enough for jumping or swaying from side to side to feel amazing . The alcohol itself is disgusting (unless it's an alcopop; they tasted good. The stronger stuff were all disgusting), but it's the effect, psychological and physical, I realise, that makes peo...

So, my friend and I took a train to Lichfield today. We explored. The Cathedral City is fantastic. Here are a few pictures from that. More at my tumblr if you wish. Lichfield is brilliant -- it's very clean, the Lichfieldians are friendly, and the mixture of old and modern architecture is excellently done. Also it has a massive, medieval cathedral. Cool for its architecture, not its practices. Erasmus Darwin lived in Lichfield On the way One of my favourite pictures that I've ever taken -- Our Creations Exceed Us They had a sign pointing to France and Germany as though it was just down the road...

Almost two weeks ago, I went to see Queen's musical We Will Rock You  with my friends. Needless to say, it was awesome and served to reinforce and remind me of the importance of "real" music (instrument-playing, vocally talented artists) in a world being flooded in autotuned, manufactured crap. But something I learnt outside the play (show? musical? I don't know what to call it! The Awesome?) was more important, more pressing. It was about the nature of people and interaction. A coach full of school girls apparently my age were aboard, coming to see The Awesome from a different city, and their coach got in the way of a shot I was trying to take of the building The Awesome was going to performed in. On a complete whim, I gave them all a sweeping wave and got many waves in return. Apart from feeling like a rockstar, it taught me that people are willing to interact, that not all people are surly curmudgeons, hateful of society. Sometimes you just need to wave first, cr...

I had an argument with my mom the other day. It was over something silly, something she blew completely out of proportion: basically, I had signed up for some online service without reading the terms & conditions closely; one requisite was that you be over 18, and I'm 17, so technically I wasn't allowed to have one. My mom found out and got absurdly displeased and said she'll confiscate my laptop for a week for this. I asked her why and she droned on about how taking my laptop won't let me do something like it again -- basically, completely missing my point -- so I pointed out that it was a mistake and I wondered why she is 'punishing' me for an accident, a (fairly common to all people) slip of the mind. She completely blew up at this. She is unable to handle the fact that her son is a rational, inquisitive being who likes discussion; she's a very traditional parent who likes the child-parent dynamic to be that of a tyrannical dictatorship (parent, dicta...